gegerlan
commented
11 years ago Why do they annoy you?
I can understand that it could be annoying with some maps not being where you expect them (like "Dream Start", "Avalon-House" and Map104 [guild, lower levels]), but I don't see the general clutter aspect of it. Unless, of course, you're expanding all of branches in the map list.
The completely blank maps are from the time when we had the agreement of indices, i.e. if you we're working on a new area, you'd announce that you'd take a couple of the free map locations so there wouldn't be conflicts. Blanks were added to support this, since it gave people something tangible to relate and work with (and stop people from using map index 1066, or some other absurd value) so it wouldn't be too abstract. It also helps when there are conflicts in the mapinfo file, making sure that the maps shows up in the editor, even if the list definition can't be properly merged.
Missing names, usually comes from failed merges where the name in the mapinfo files weren't carried over. This may also be the reason why the location isn't where you expect it to be.
Since we're not rewriting the internal data structure of the mapinfo file, we should probably still be using the concept of blank maps for the time being. If anything, more should probably be added to avoid the pitfalls of mapinfo conflicts (so maps don't just get lost in a merge).
While I could have done a better job at documenting and categorizing the maps, I don't like the concept of having a big "abandoned" or "unused" maps bucket. Unused could be OK for making blank maps available (i.e. where you grab your land), but placing maps with content in it, or deeming maps abandoned; may give the impressions that they are undesirable. An impression I don't want to give.
ghost
I'm new so I might be misreading this, but there seem to be a lot of orphaned maps hanging around. While they're not hurting anything they tend to annoy me and clutter up the map list.
Some of them are unnamed, look like they were one-offs, or are still completely blank. While I don't think we should necessarily remove them, since there's a fine line between dormant and abandoned, I would at least like to suggest we place these suspected abandoned maps under an 'Unused Maps' map heading in the hierarchy to reduce clutter.
I can take a whack at organizing the maps myself, but I don't know that I have the best historic knowledge of what's merely dormant or truly abandoned.